Name: Drolled Mushrooms
Ingredients: 8 large open mushrooms; 2 ounces butter; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 2 shallots, chopped; black pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; ½ cup good stock; 4 tablespoons red wine

Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Drolled Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Clean the mushrooms, leaving the stalks on and trimming them to a point.
Wash the mushrooms and place them on a drying sieve to drain.
In a saucepan, melt the butter with the chopped parsley and shallots over medium heat for 1 minute.
Place the mushrooms stalk-side up in a sauté pan and pour the butter mixture over them.
Season with black pepper and coarse sea salt, then broil in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.
Add the stock to the mushrooms and bring to a boil.
Pour the cooking liquid over the mushrooms, adding more gravy if desired, and ensure it is hot.
An hour and 15 minutes before serving, add the red wine and liver to the dish.
Serve very hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,982 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Mushroom + red winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together720 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, shallot, pepper, red wine):

Thymefits better
Parsleythe original
Clovefits about as well
Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, shallot, pepper, red wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.